• Born in Leeds, in September 1927.
• Educated in Leeds and was training to be an Aircraft Engineer when he left school
• Served in the army from January 1946 till 1949. He was an infantry soldier in the Royal Northumberland Fusiliers. He was posted as a Corporal in Greece and Gibraltar
• He was accepted for a P.T. Course and became a Sergeant Instructor in the Army Physical Training Corps.
• When he left the army, he became an Assistant Youth Leader in Newcastle. 
• In 1950 he started training as a Remedial Gymnast in Wakefield, Yorkshire. 
• His first post as a Remedial Gymnast was at Selly Oak and 18 months later, he got a job at the Acci.
• Thackery was given responsibility for the victims of severe injury of the brain by Ruscoe Clarke.
• In 1960 he left the Acci to work for the Birmingham Education School Health Department, as a Remedial Gymnast to their special school’s branch – he spent 2 years among physically and mentally handicapped children.
• His GP told him to give up trauma surgery as it was incompatible with his cardiac health after a coronary thrombosis. Instead, he went to Uganda as an educationalist. He set up an infant department of Continuing Medical Education for the Ugandan Ministry of Health. On visiting hospitals around Uganda, he found very little evidence of libraries, journals or any teaching programmes. The small rural towns had no book shops or libraries, but always a beer parlour.

A story from Uganda

“I was given and have treasured Mr. Gissane’s own copy of “Modern Trend in Accident Surgery and Medicine” by Ruscoe Clarke, Mr Badger and Dr Sevitt, and you can imagine that the teachings in that ancient book were put to good use in knowledge that we felt we needed to impart. Some hospitals had no idea as to how to recognise features of post-traumatic shock so well documented in that book. For instance, one patient we found concealed under blankets on a ward round. “Oh, she’s just a mad woman the police brought in from a road accident.” Well, she turned out to have no palpable pulse. No blood pressure machine could be found on the ward, and the only needles available for resuscitation were infant scalp vein needles of calibre 24 French gauge. As Ruscoe Clarke wrote in “Modern Trends” … “Transfusion should be given through the largest… cannula that it is possible to insert, preferably 13 gauge.” Well, the government Medical Stores and even the best surgical suppliers in the country had nothing bigger than the normal 21-gauge green needle. However, we had obtained some large cow needles from a veterinary supplier which we carried with us on our visits. These sufficed, and it proved possible to get 7 bottles of saline into the lady in the next half an hour using one. We had a surgeon with us, and soon operated on her (I had to give the anaesthetic!) and he repaired a ruptured bladder that complicated her fractured pelvis, and she was able to walk out of hospital a fortnight later. We left the cow needles with the doctors in that hospital and they were subsequently put to good use a month later on a patient with a ruptured ectopic pregnancy. Teaching by example is far more powerful than lecturing!”

Another story from Uganda

“The question was what to advise in the Ugandan situation. I was asked by a medically qualified nun to see a patient with a fracture over the left parietal bone, who was aphasic and paralysed down the right side of the body. I advised that in the situation of a rural hospital the patient should be transferred to the teaching hospital; advice that the patient’s parents flatly refused. So, reluctantly, I showed the nun how to do a limited craniotomy with simple tools such as she had in the hospital,  and was gratified to hear from her a month later that the patient had made a good recovery and been discharged, and that she had one much the same to another patient with an open skull fracture leaking brain tissue and having epileptiform fits, again with a satisfactory outcome. The nun has now gone to the postgraduate teaching hospital for full surgical training. Despite this I am sure you can imagine the worry I experienced over whether to respond to a request for advice as to how to diagnose and treat such difficult cases in a rural hospital where referral to a teaching hospital with full facilities was utterly impossible.”

• Returning to the Acci and together with Miss Savage (the Head Occupational Therapist) transformed the therapeutic approach to these ‘lamebrains’
• “Thackeray’s behaviour with his patients, particularly in the Hospital’s gymnasium, could easily have been mistaken for that of a bully but a bully behaves as he does for his own disreputable satisfaction. What Thackeray recognized was the need to challenge and stretch his patients and thereby to try to replace in the injured brain patterns of perception and reaction that would become part of more purposeful and everyday activity”
• “If his authoritative, no-nonsense insistence and persistence caused resentment in his patients that resentment fired their determination to ‘show him’, which may have been combined with less than complimentary thoughts. Whatever they may have felt at the time, none of his patients or their relatives could have been anything but admiringly grateful for what he enabled them to do.”
• Several injured patients were brought from the wards to the gym every day, even when they couldn’t stand
• Invented the original “walking frame” which was made at the Acci using metal work adapted from the traction beds
• Variations of frames were both the Pulpit/ Atlas type and the normal size.
• Patients went on to make these from wood
• This frame would later become the Zimmer frame as we know it today
• For the less able patient a climbing harness, ropes and pulleys within a larger framework on wheels were used (which jack designed)
• There would be at least 3 people – one on feet, one on arms and Jack giving commands 
• We would move the patient through assisted walking movements. The results were amazing improvements and recovery in motor and sensory patterns
• 1962 Co-founded The Head Injuries Club – with Peter London and Philip Lockhart (chief almoner/ social worker) because more people were surviving from severe brain injury, who in earlier times would have certainly died
• He had a big impact in the Head Injuries Club – not only being involved in the set-up of the club but also had a big presence on the social nights. “At club evenings on Monday evening one will usually find him present and helping the members in their games, i.e. table tennis, draughts, etc. or joining in their panel games.”
• Together with Mr P Lockhart (head almoner) and Mr H Proctor (F.R.C.S.Ed.) in the late 1950s and early 1960s, sprang an international awareness of the special needs of those disabled by head injury.
• Had ambitions to start a workshop for people with Brain Injury and to see this recognized on a National Scale, much the same as Polio victims, etc.
• First there was the Head Injuries Club, then Headway, which spread its beneficial influence across Britain and to many other countries, and now the International Head Injuries Association. 
• Thackeray carried out lectures world-wide and even performed on T.V.
• Thackeray was at home in any company, communicating well with all kinds of people. “He could ‘mix it’ verbally with the rough ones among his patients and he could at least hold his own in discussion with doctors as well as his fellow therapists”
• “He was a ‘doer’ rather than a writer; he could be very crafty in stimulating patients. Rather than an academic, he set standards and showed methods that inscribed themselves indelibly in the minds and understanding of a wide range of persons who were involved in the care of head injury patients.”
• “His closing years at the Accident Hospital saw him challenged by physical and emotional adversity; he could have retired with honour and respect, but he carried on. To see him at his farewell party, looking well, speaking firmly and proudly wearing the tie and blazer of the Army Physical Training corps gave one confidence that he would long be able to enjoy his retirement.”